When Water Rises

Cecilia is in a daze after her visit to her elderly relative Rut. She realizes how close she came to losing what matters most in life and how fragile everything around her is. When she sees again the person who caused her trauma in her youth, everything she has built up is put at risk again.

At the same time, a dark chapter in Swedish history unfolds as we follow the young Rut, who is forced to watch her beautiful family farm demolished and her home village of Valmåsen devastated by the advance of hydroelectric power, sixty years earlier. Forced to leave her life behind, she fights to keep both her family and her dreams together.

Two women's destinies are bound together by generations of silence, longing and strength, in a gripping novel about choice, loss and resistance.

When Water Rises is the second part of the Valmåsen trilogy, which is based on true events.

 

 

Reviews part 1:

“In the books about Valmåsen, Karin Härjegård works in two time frames. A late 1950s where the twins Elsa and Rut and their parents one day receive the news that the newly renovated family farm will be submerged. The compensation is enough for a small ethernet house in the neighboring village of Tännäs. In parallel, we follow Cecilia in the present, who lives in Sundsvall and works as a coach and conversation therapist. The two stories live their own lives for a long time, but are skillfully tied ever closer to each other at the same time as they are each other's distortions: What do we use the time and electricity that flooded villages and lands gave us for?

In Valmåsen, the emphasis is on one's own creation, on self-sufficiency, on survival, on farms that have been built up by generations. In the present, Cecilia sorts the personalities of staff groups by color and improves group dynamics with poorly substantiated exercises. Surface above all.” -

Malin Palmqvist, Länstidningen, Östersund.

 

 

"Strong, emotional and thought-provoking. These are just some of the words that come to my mind when I read the touching and well-written novel When Water Approaches. This is a novel I want to put in everyone's hands! We need to understand our past and the sacrifices people make for new needs and behaviors.

Karin Härjegård has an extraordinary ability to tell and write books with warmth and empathy about people and events that touch and engage me deeply. I get angry, despair and tears flow when I share people's struggles and experiences."

- Agneta Norrgård, book reviewer and reading promoter

 

"A book that truly lives up to my high expectations! Karin Härjegård has a rare ability to arouse my commitment to the characters she creates."

- Pekka Heino, book reviewer

 

"Her ways to look at us, how every person is unique... she writes with such warmth" - Johanna Lundin, Go Kväll tv review